I read that a 60 year old woman is celebrating her 15th birthday today! Yes, it's Leap Day 2012, a great day to do something outside of normal space and time.
Like what? Like ending a karmic relationship attachment! Set yourself free, by completely accepting a painful situation that you were hoping would get better someday. Perhaps you've exhausted yourself trying to rescue, fix, change, teach a lesson to, guide, uplift, convince, inspire, argue with, prove wrong, fight, reform, prevent, nullify or otherwise remove yourself from the impact of another person on whom you somehow grew to depend. Or you thought you didn't care anymore, but you've forgotten how much more potential you will have to live if you not only let go better expectations of that limiting person, but actually replace them with someone else much more able AND willing (don't forget the willing part!) to supply you with your own sacred needs and wants. After all, you're the one who so beautifully hoped and chose to grow! So let's be absolutely done with supporting, helping, and enabling that opposing person in your life, shall we? It's time to support, help, and enable the most amazing precious individual on whom you can always rely to really care about what you're going through - YOU!
So say it, feel it, let it be: "This situation is already all it's ever going to be. That's it, I'm through, I'm starting a new chapter in my life! If they had wanted to do more better things with me they would have done so by now, because I made myself plenty clear on more than one occasion. And I really *like* what I stand for, I stand by what I said to them! I admire me, and if someone came to me with what I said and did, then I would have valued and adored them to no end. We would have had such fun!"
"So... I no longer judge, criticize or worry about what will happen to that other person who didn't get me now, because they have their own connection to the universe to take care of themselves. They always did and always will, and what's more I have mine! They make their own choices, and what's more I make mine! So dear Universe, I turn away from them and turn myself back to you. I create my own life with your support, not theirs! I'm done with that old dead-end relationship and situation. My own hopes and dreams, which they never really wanted but I still absolutely do, were and still are so alive, vital, and beautiful that I refuse to be affected by their limiting decisions for me anymore. I am willing to finally be free! Provide me directly and abundantly with all I need to grow more fully, deeply, rapidly and joyfully than I have known before! I am ready now, in fact I have been for a while, so watch me, here I go!"
Leap Day is traditionally a day to turn the tables on chauvanism and give the ladies a chance to speak up for what they really want. St. Bridget of Ireland, whose namesake was the goddess Bridget of the fairy kingdom, the Tuatha de Danann, struck a deal with manly old St. Patrick, charmer of the snakes. Bridget declared that every four years the women would get to propose to the men they prefer to wed. In many countries on Leap Day, men are supposed to pay a penalty or buy clothes for a woman whose proposal they refuse, and in the middle ages this was governed by law.
What this means is that Leap Day is the perfect day to let the Goddess rule from within your own soul, whose deeper love has been so often overruled in a world of might making right. Choose the mate to whom your heart really belongs. In other words, end that old karmic relationship and propose to commit to yourself, and be sure to say yes I do! More love than you've ever known will follow in the footsteps of the sacred inner marriage that only you decide.
If you live in the Boston area, you're welcome to join us for a Leap Day discussion about ending karma at the Swedenborg Chapel, see my meetup description at www.CosmicDocent.com
For more clarity on the nature of codependent dysfunctional relationships and how much you want and need to end the pain of unrequited love, check out this Feb 21 Wall Street Journal article by Elizabeth Bernstein on Why we pair up with our emotional opposites, which summarizes the points of a great new book called "Attached" by Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachel S. F. Heller, M.A. The field of attachment theory, long observed from how infants attach to caregivers and what happens when they become alienated, is now being applied successfully to adult relationships. When you don't get secure love, you become either compulsively seeking of love (called the Anxious type), or reflexively emotionally suspicious and withholding (called the Avoiding type). Stereotypes that say that's just what women and men do wouldn't be the point, unless you're an Avoidant!
Below I repeat two comments I made on the WSJ site to the article, the second being in reply to a woman named Alex who basically said (I won't presume to repost without permission) that she paid a therapist a lot of money to tell her what I said, and she wishes someone would write a book advising Anxious types to spot Avoidant types and run in the opposite direction!
Carl Schroeder Wrote:
Great article, looking forward to the book! Anxious/Avoidant labels may be just an update of the old pursuer/pursued dynamic that fuels unrequited love, but how worthwhile more study is. Reminds me of the term "limerance", invented by Dorothy Tennov for the urgent emotional state at the beginning of relationship attachment when feelings need to be reciprocated and if aren't then painful emotional coping mechanisms can set in. I know too well the codependency patterns of mismatched love temperments, so what's new to me is this encouraging idea that 50% of the population is Secure and stable and ready to give and receive intimacy just fine, hurray! I've been an Anxious type who was hurt and stuck on Avoidant types who made me feel just awful for simply being a guy who values lots of communication and affection. Forget fixing them to want what I want, I've sworn off the chemistry of opposites attracting and am switching to the happy majority that knows they're okay and just needed to find some real compatibility!
ALEX LANDRY Replied...
Carl Schroeder Replied:
I totally appreciate your reply and your experience Alex, thank you! And I am writing a book about these kind of relationship issues, but it's a little more complex and spiritual than simply advising Anxious types to run from Avoidant types, which is many books on unrequited love do say. I say that relationships are transcendent and there are people we are destined to meet in life, so running from these soul connections is what Avoidants are doing and we don't want to just sink further to their level of injury/injuring. Anxious types know what love is but haven't had a consistent source, so that is what they are needy to cultivate, while Avoidant types have been directly abused by those they love and are threatened by intimacy, so the love they seek needs to be controlled. The trick is to find a healthy right relationship with everyone we are meant to love in life, reserving our full vulnerability for the most reliable secure individuals. We actually all have inner Anxiety and Avoidant personalities for different situations in which we still need to master personal success. Anxiety types when in the desperation of getting someone to love them can become extremely avoiding and escapist of the rest of their life, and like the article said they can then become Avoidant and uncaring of the spouse who gets "secured" in marriage but remains emotionally distant. Ultimately, everyone decides how much they want to get from their own life, and will find support to match, for good or ill. Hope these ideas help!
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